Flesh and Blood
by Marvelicious
Summary: She catches up to Nebula on one of the outer star systems; more precisely, a moon known only by letters and numbers, tucked into the atmosphere of a gas giant.


She catches up to Nebula on one of the outer star systems; more precisely, a moon known only by letters and numbers, tucked into the atmosphere of a gas giant. It is uninhabitable, the vast majority of its surface covered in pits and chasms bubbling with magma, but that is of no consequence to Nebula.

Gamora sweats beneath her space-suit, her augmented body and a host of regulators still no match for the heat coming off the crater in front of her. According to her calculations, it is possible for her to survive this. It just won't be easy - or pleasant. "Nebula!"

She doesn't have to wait long, though Gamora half-expected Nebula to toy with her first: watch her stagger around in circles trying to avoid burning jets of liquified rock. She thinks that might have even been justified.

"Too hot for your human?" Nebula sneers, mechanical voice warped and fragmented.

Gamora whips around, and there she is, silhouette dark against the glow of embers and shimmering around the edges from the heat. One of her hands appears skeletal, clawlike metal burning white-hot with the heat of their surroundings, and Gamora realizes a moment later that it is an imperfect replacement for the once she lost during the attack on Nova Corps.

All this time, and she has yet to synthesize new skin, anything more than the most rudimentary imitation of a hand. Gamora feels a pang deep in her gut as she wonders how her sister has been living.

"This is between us," Gamora tells her. The rest of the crew wouldn't be able to survive on this godforsaken moon for more than a moment, and she has no doubt that Nebula knows it, but she wouldn't be lying either if she told Nebula that taking them was never a consideration.

"So you've been keeping track of our dear old dad too." The tone of her voice suggests that Nebula's not impressed in the least, and Gamora doesn't know how to get through to her. She _had_ wronged her sister, too wrapped up in her own pride to realize it then. "You're cutting it awful close, sis."

"I need your help," Gamora admits, not bothering with pretense. Nebula already knows why she is here. Telling her that Gamora began searching for her long before now is pointless when Thanos has always taken priority out of sheer necessity. "If he gets the last stone - if he completes the gauntlet,"

"Worlds die, maybe reality itself," Nebula cuts her off, fanning her mouth with the damaged hand. Spindly metal joints form a latticework over her lips, doing nothing to disguise Nebula's mockery of a yawn. "You're not the only one plotting against him. I'd rather like that gauntlet for myself."

Her eyes glimmer wickedly, alight with her casual declaration that Gamora would be a fool to trust her.

"You?"

Nebula steps forward, the eerie orange light casting her features in harsher relief. Time has not been kind to her. There are holes - burns and tears - in Nebula's synthetic skin, exposed wires, patches that have obviously been repaired more than once. "I want vengeance," she says, and Gamora can hear clicking and whirring beneath it, the distortion even more obvious now, "on you, on him, on the whole damn universe. And then perhaps I'll see what it's like to be real again."

"What has the universe ever done to you?" Gamora argues, tempted to hash out her own guilt, but knowing infinitely better.

"Nothing," Nebula hisses right back, "it did nothing when Thanos destroyed my past, nothing when he made me into this, and nothing ever since. It can do nothing forevermore."

Her blood would be boiling if it wasn't already, and Gamora is tempted to beat some sense into her sister - grapple her and pin her to the ground until she'll see sense, but she can't risk it here. Nebula's glowing metal parts might burn through her space suit, and that's all the protection she has against this hellish moon.

"You're talking like a madwoman, Nebula. The universe isn't to blame for Thanos, and it had nothing to do with what he made us."

"He made you _perfect_ ," Nebula spits, ground out between gears. "Stronger, better - everything you could have hoped for if you weren't so _ungrateful_." She stretches her hand out over a nearby crater, ripples of distortion rising up and around her hand from the heat of it. It glows brighter and brighter, until the skin still frayed around her wrist begins to smolder and melt.

"Nebula, stop."

"I dare you," her sister says. "Feel what I can't."

It is a test - one Gamora knows better than to take her up on. The reflection of the flames makes Nebula look hellish - something wicked and desperate, but there is no pain on her sister's features. Only hatred.

"He took everything from me, and you stole the rest."

"If you want flesh and blood, I'll give it to you," Gamora tells her, "but not here, and not the universe. Come with me, stand against our father, and I will get you your revenge."

Nebula draws her arm back, extinguishing the flames with her other hand as if it were nothing. She smirks, cold and broken. "Thanos first then. But my sister, make no mistake - his crimes won't cover yours."

Gamora doesn't think that Nebula is bluffing - but she is reminded far more of the atrocities she committed under Thanos' orders than how she has wronged her sister. It would be a simple lie: not easy, but certainly possible to overpower Nebula once more when the time comes…

But perhaps Gamora deserves as much.

Starlord would have something else to say, but he was not the one raised to deal in blood and death. It is not he who strikes fear into the hearts of all they come across in their search of Thanos, in the wake of his terror that Gamora herself once helped to wreak. As much as she has enjoyed his admiration this past year, Gamora knows better than to ever think herself as good as he believes. Her past - who she was created to be - it was always going to catch up to her sooner or later. They need Nebula.

So long as the universe is safe, it will not miss her. That _someone_ will is far more than she ever expected.

"Neither yours," Gamora points out, "but if we succeed, I will submit to your revenge, Nebula."

"And I shall take my time with you," Nebula promises. There is a deadly grace in the jerky motion of her joints as she stretches out her near-molten hand - something not unlike the unpredictable spray of liquified rock here on this hellish moon she has chosen for their meeting place - attempting to trap Gamora into shaking on it. "My dear sister."


End file.
